wow. tough mc for sam and i last night. a trust issue came up and frankly, i was quite a bit disappointed with how sam handled things. very similar to your sitch. in my sitch, sam has been invited to get a cup of coffee by a former patient who is recently divorced. You and I both know what the immediate answer should have been: a resounding "No!"
whether or not our wives think they have dealt with the pain of their infidelities and are ready to move on matters not. if anyone disagrees and thinks i am "in love with my pain" and that is the reason i cannot move forward at this time, tough. i am not in love with my pain. if i could cut it out of my body i would do so even with a dull butterknife! my wife was unable to tell the man no, even though she had the feeling it would be wrong to say yes; she didn't want to hurt his feelings and she didn't ask me about it because she thought i would be angry. i would have done what you did, jethro: tell her it is up to her to decide but i was uncomfortable with it and if she needed a way to tell him no, i would have suggested she tell him it simply would be inappropriate because he was once a patient. but she considered going and neither said yes or no.
when she brought this up in counseling i became angry for two reasons, maybe even three. firstly, why the f did she even consider going? secondly, why didn't she come to me for support? and thirdly, given that she is now working on our m, why wasn't there an automatic response to immediately say no and to heck with the other guy's feelings? what about my feelings? if it feels ever so slightly wrong, then don't do it. don't do anything with someone else you couln't do if i were there.
I am very happy that you were able to get through to your wife and have her realize that what she was doing was a concern of yours, and also painful to you. I think you did a very strong thing by creating the dialog with her that allowed her to see what she was doing. i would have done the same thing if i had known about what my wife was struggling with. I am her husband and i am here to help, ya know?
maybe i'm reading too much into what is being said between sam and i. she has said to me many, many times she could never ever have another affair or hurt me like this again. but while she was explaining the whole thing to the counselor and i, she said she didn't think it could lead to another affair. am i paying too much attention to every word, or does that ring of uncertainty? we went from never ever to i don't think...are we too hypersensitive? and if we are, aren't we now unattractive and sabotaging our dbing efforts to save our m? i do not want sam to think, "gosh, nothing i do is enough for him."
however, the simple fact is: if one is having trouble with bounderies and keeps seeing that line as blurred, then that person needs to stay the f out of any sitch that will test those bounderies until the m is on solid ground again.
quoting you:
Quote: I guess, for me, she may feel as though she "paid" for it, but I don't think so. However, I know these thoughts will get US nowhere. So, I'm trying to just accept and forgive...and it's hard... I want vindication, but there is no such thing in this situation.
i have also come to realize vindication is impossible. what are we going to do, hurt the one we love so dearly? not an option. beat the om up? nah, too expensive. sure, maybe a sarcastic jab here or there, but not like we may have done before dbing because i certainly do not want my wife to feel i am rubbing her face into her mistakes. i am not trying to make her hurt any more than she already does. i hate to see her in such pain. i dearly love her and want to help her.
but your quote pretty much sums of my feelings. all we can do is accecpt and forgive...over...and over...and over...and over because the reminders are everywhere. shiny told me, as did you, that the images eventually fade and i think they will, but as the left behind and betrayed spouses our wives need to watch what they say and do because they are under our scruntiny! are we smothering or crowding them...probably a little. but gee, i can't imagine why. my point being, whether they are doing something wrong or not, it is their turn to understand how we perceive what they are doing and how it helps or hurts the m.
what bothers me most, is why do we even have to have the conversation in the first place? our wives must know of our hypersensitivity to their actions, right? in fact, just like when every single dber here in the beginning, had to "appear" to be making changes for the better, so our sig other would perceive we are changing. again, our sig other needs to be concerned with how we now perceive what they are doing. Especially now that our changes are permanent so as to help the marriage get better. (well, geddy lee did say "no changes are permanent, but change is," :-)right?).
quoting sam
Quote: So So so So hard to trust when you've been deceived and hurt. And when you're not seeing the things you need to to believe she is completely aware of how she got where she got.
Even SAM knows this and still has trouble coming to me, or else she would have simply asked how i felt about her having coffee with another man. she so desperately needs to stop feeling lonely. she believes lonliness to be the main reason for her infidelity. i understand this, so we have to understand and give a little slack even tho it hurts, i guess. i don't want her to be lonely; i want her to have many friends. i very much want her to be happy. but right now, while things are still raw, i feel that our wives need to be mindful of those boundery problems and not put themselves in any sitch where we as onetime lbses can let our imagination run wild.
to quote a quote:
Quote: all you can do is voice your fears and feelings and let her conscience do the rest of the work. the more honest you are with your feelings, and only yours (no blaming, no predicting), then she'll be allowed to be honest with hers.
Isn't this what we have been doing?
stay the course. i think we will all be ok soon. just a feeling...
